L. A. Heat (17 page)

Martinez called a few minutes later.

“All done here,” David said. “I’ll stop at Keiko’s
and get prints made.

“We’re gonna be early. Grab some breakfast?”

“Sure. As long as it doesn’t involve sauerkraut.”

“Even the Germans aren’t that crazy.”

They met in a greasy spoon two blocks from the
arcade where Anstrom had hung out. Martinez looked over the shots and between
them they picked out half a dozen, all similar in body type, dress, and hair
color.

“Now that’s an honest six-pack,” Martinez said,
rearranging the pictures so Chris’s was on top. He tapped the picture. David
had considered how he was going to put this, but in the end he just said, “Do
we both need to run this lineup?”

“What have you got in mind?”

“Think you can get another warrant from Judge
Harris?”

“What do you want it for?”

“Chris’s work place. Let’s find out what his
schedule should have been and get a list of who to contact to confirm if he
showed up when he claims he did on those off-site jobs. And let’s have a look
at his computer. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Meanwhile, I’ll hit the arcade, snoop
around, see if anyone recognizes Chris from this lineup.”

Tuesday,
8:30 am, Canon Drive, Beverly Hills

Simon frowned across at Chris,
clearly not happy with his newest client. Chris didn’t really care. He had
spent half the night prowling the streets of Santa Monica, without any luck.

Finally he had called Des back and insisted they
file another report with the Santa Monica Police, but Chris could tell they
weren’t going to be taken seriously.

“So, the police impounded your vehicle and have
probably already searched it.” Simon studied Chris shrewdly. “What might such a
search yield?”

“What do you mean?” Chris felt renewed panic. He
had thought once Simon heard his story he would dismiss the police allegations
without hesitation. “They won’t find anything! Jesus, I’ve never done anything
to anyone in my life.”

“Except you misunderstand the role of evidence in
the police mind. They are looking for proof that this man you met, this Bobby,
was in your vehicle. You admitted as much to them.”

“I drove him around. Is that a crime?”

“Sexual misconduct will strengthen their case.”

“What sexual misconduct?”

“Proof that sex of any kind occurred in your
vehicle.” Simon opened a drawer and pulled out a legal-sized pad of yellow
paper and a gold pen. The pen scratched as he wrote. “We must immediately seek
to have the warrant and subsequent search quashed. Then it won’t matter what
they find.”

“Are you saying if they can prove this guy and I
had sex it means I killed him? Is it because we’re gay?”

“In their minds, your sexual orientation may
strengthen their case.”

“
What case
?” Chris couldn’t believe this.
“I didn’t
do
anything. How often do I have to say that?”

“I agree their case is weak. They know it, too,
otherwise they would have moved to arrest you by now.” Simon tapped his thumbs
together and held Chris’s gaze, as though testing his fortitude. Abruptly he
nodded. “We will move to strike the results of the search. Then they will have
no case. That will force them to act quickly to secure one, which should play
in our favor.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t want to force
them to do anything—except leave me alone. Can’t you do that?”

“In the long run—yes. But for the short term, the
police are like bulldogs, very tenacious. They will not want to give you up
since I’m sure they have convinced themselves you look better than you do.”

“Maybe if I talked to them again—”

“No, that will definitely not do. At this point
anything you say will only further their interest. You should not have talked
to them at all.” Simon looked hard at him. “If they come for you again, you
will not only not speak to them, you will invoke my name and refuse any comment
until I am beside you. And I mean any comment. That was an incredibly foolish
thing you did.”

Chris ignored the jibe. “If they come for me—you
think they’re going to arrest me?”

“Doubtful. But neither are they going to leave you
alone.”

Chris swore and ground his teeth together. “How
long do I have to live with them watching me, trying to trip me up?”

“Until they find a better suspect.”

Tuesday,
11:30 am, Vanowen Street, North Hollywood, Los Angeles

The Jungle Arcade was filled
with a mix of teenage boys and girls. Even the proprietor barely looked old
enough to be out of school. His prime job seemed to be dispensing quarters to
feed the insatiable video machines.

The front lobby, littered with the usual gang
tags, opened into a cavernous hall lined with video machines. The noise was a
steady roar. Behind the counter, the proprietor’s head bobbed to music from his
headphones.

He noticed David the minute he walked in. The
headphones came off and he watched David approach.

“Yeah?”

“I’m looking for Smitty.”

“That’s me. Who’s looking?”

David flashed his shield. “I got some pictures I’d
like you to look over.”

“Pictures of who?”

“You just tell me if you recognize anyone.” He
laid the six-pack of images out on the scratched, glass-topped counter. “Any of
these people ever come in here?”

A girl drifted over, thin as an apology, pink hair
tied back in a careless bun, wearing enough metal piercings to keep an airport
security checkpoint buzzing. Her kohl-blackened eyes fastened on the six
pictures and she studied them avidly, picking the sheet up with fingers that
sported inch-long bright-fuchsia nails.

“Who’s that?” She was pointing a nail at Chris’s
picture.

“Ever see him around?” David asked casually.

She shook her pink head. “Nah. Too bad. He’s
cute.”

Smitty scowled at her words.

“How ’bout you?” David asked him. “See any of
them?”

Smitty glared at the girl, then shook his head at
David. “Sorry.”

“Mind if I ask around?”

“Go ahead. Marcia.” Smitty laid the sarcasm on
thick. “Take him back and find Ant and Digger.”

She stuck her tongue—pierced in two places—out at
him and sauntered back toward the dimly lit central arcade. David picked up the
pictures and followed.

“Miss...Marcia,” he called as she strode through
the crowded machine-filled room. “Marcia.” She stopped so suddenly he nearly
plowed into her. She twisted around to look at him.

“What did you call me?”

“Marcia...That’s not your name?” David felt as
though there was some big joke going on around him and everyone else was in on
it. “That
is
what Smitty called you.”

“He’s always calling me something. Marcia’s his
‘get off your high horse, bitch’ name for me.”

David just looked at her, knowing he was missing
something, without a clue as to what. “You don’t get it?” She rolled her eyes.
“Marcia?
The Brady Bunch
?”

“Wasn’t that a seventies show?”

Another roll of the eyes said it all. Suddenly she
caught sight of someone and abandoned the jaded act, squealing like the
sixteen-year-old he figured she probably was.

“Hey, Dig!” She flashed a huge grin his way. “He’s
the one you wanna talk to. Oh, man, he’s so hot.”

David suppressed a smile when the skinny blond
“hunk” squeezed through the crowd in answer to her call. Digger was dressed
like all the others in the pseudo-gang style they all affected; his baggy pants
hung off his hips, showing a pair of red and black boxers underneath. His plaid
flannel shirt flopped open at the neck to reveal a concave chest that hadn’t
filled out yet with any muscle. The kid couldn’t have been over eighteen.

Not-Marcia had gone back to affecting a pose of
bored sophistication. “We still going to see that show tonight?” she asked, her
nails raking through strands of hot-pink hair.

“Sure, whatever.”

“You Digger?” David stepped between the two before
their budding romance could take over. “Either of you know a Daniel Anstrom?”

“DJ? Sure, I know him.” Digger’s dark eyes moved
from Not-Marcia to David. “What’s up?”

“He’s got some pictures he wants you to look at,”
Not-Marcia said.

“I’m looking for anyone with a connection to
Daniel—DJ.”

“Ain’t seen DJ in ages. What gives there, huh?”

Apparently word hadn’t filtered down that their
friend was dead. David didn’t want to tell them here, like this.

“Listen, is there someplace we can talk?” he
asked. “Bring along anyone else who might have known Daniel.”

“Oh, you want to talk to Ant. Him and DJ were like
this.” Not-Marcia crossed her fingers.

Digger and the girl found Ant, who looked like a
Digger clone, and they moved toward the rear of the arcade, where some kind of
renovation was under way. The floor underfoot was littered with paint chips and
old plaster board. David sidestepped a rusted tin can filled with old nails.

Light came from a pair of overhead bulbs. A drop
cloth covered a counter like Smitty’s. David set his six-pack of pictures down
on it.

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” he said, catching
Not-Marcia’s gaze, then moving on to Digger and Ant’s. “Daniel Anstrom, DJ, is
dead.”

Not-Marcia looked dazed. “Dead?”

“DJ?” Digger shook his head. “No way, he can’t
be—”

“I’m afraid he is,” David said gently. “He died
several weeks ago. His mother has identified his body.”

“But I saw him—” Digger froze. “Shit, maybe that
was awhile ago. I don’t believe this. How—?”

David dug out his tin and held it out for them to
see. “Daniel was murdered. That’s why I’m here.” He pinned Digger with his
gaze. “When and where did you see him last?”

“Here,” Digger said. “He was always here. ’Less he
was working...Man, homicide?”

“Did you ever see any of these men here? Ever see
Daniel talking to any of them?

All three youths bent over the pictures, as though
they could fathom what had happened to their friend by studying them. Digger
was first to shake his head.

“Never seen any of them.”

“Ever see Daniel talking to anyone you didn’t
know? Probably an older guy.”

“How old?” Ant wanted to know.

“At least late twenties. Probably thirties.”

“Wow, old, then,” the girl murmured. “Sometimes
they come in. Usually trying to hit on us.” She made a face. “It’s so lame.
They’re like, ancient. I might as well date my father.”

“But not these guys?” David indicated the
pictures. Trying not to think how ancient he was at thirty-seven.

“Sorry, no,” Digger said.

“Except for his uncle,” Ant muttered. He rubbed
one chewed up finger along his fuzz-covered face. “That time he got sick,
remember?”

David felt a stir of excitement. “Who was sick?
Daniel’s uncle?”

“Nah,” Ant said. “DJ was here playing as usual.
This guy comes in, hell, none of us pay any attention, and DJ never said who he
was, but then DJ got real sick. And that’s when this guy said he was DJ’s uncle
and he was gonna take him home.” Ant glared at Digger. “You don’t remember
that?”

“Don’t remember no uncle,” Digger said. “I thought
DJ was stoned.”

“He was sick.”

“The uncle tell you that?” David kept the
excitement out of his voice. “What did his uncle look like?”

Ant shrugged. “Old.” He glanced at the pictures.
“Like that, maybe older.”

“White?”

The look Ant gave him said “Of course” as though
David was stupid.

“What about hair color? You remember that?”

“I don’t know. Light, I guess. Blond.”

In frustration, though he knew if a defense
attorney like Weiss ever heard of it, he’d be raked over the hottest legal
coals, David tapped the sheet of pictures on the counter.

“You’re sure it wasn’t one of these guys?”

Ant studied the pictures again, even going so far
as to pick up Chris’s, but he was firmly shaking his head when he dropped it
back down.

“No. None of them is DJ’s uncle.”

Then David did something he knew would get him
nailed good. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the rest of the
pictures he had taken of Chris that morning.

“Here,” he said. “Look these over.”

Again Ant peered down at the three new pictures,
his face screwed up in a scowl. He eventually tossed the three images on top of
the old ones.

“Nope. Ain’t him.”

*****

“Could we have the wrong guy?”
David threw the photos down on the hood of Martinez’s car.

Martinez stood blinking down at them. They had met
up in the parking lot of the building across the street from DataTEK shortly
after three o’clock.

“They’re kids,” Martinez said. “They make a wrong
ID based on one picture.”

David considered a second, then sighed and dropped
the other three pictures on top of the first six. “Except I also showed them
these. They were still adamant.”

“Shit, even a first-year police detective could
get a lineup like that tossed, even if your wits had copped to knowing him.” Martinez
frowned. “This ain’t like you, Davey.”

David ignored that. “We have nothing else on this
guy.”

“He knew the last victim,” Martinez said with some
exasperation. “He admits to fucking him, cops to having him in his truck. We
got the victim’s glasses in his truck.”

“Glasses ID’d from a photo. You know how many
glasses of that type there are in this city? Your first-year P.D. would love us
to walk into court with that one.”

“Get the prescription—”

“I’ve requested that from the brother.”

“So we’ll still get him.”

David ticked off the problems he was having with
the whole “Bellamere as doer” scenario. “We got the bartender’s testimony of
the last guy the victim hustled. If it went down like Chris said and the victim
stormed off in a huff, he could just as easily have been picked up by someone
else.” He scooped up the useless images. “We don’t even know for sure he was
picked up that night. For all we know it was the next night.”